Creativity Prompts for Writers, Journalers, Artists and Speakers

In 1874, Captain Francois-Elie Roudaire, a geographer in the French army proposed a daring idea. No doubt inspired by the successful completion of the Suez canal a few years earlier, he suggested the creation of a 120-mile-long canal that would connect the Mediterranean Sea to a part of the Sahara Desert in Algeria that lies below sea level. The result would be the flooding of more than 3000 square miles of territory. Roudaire hoped that such a huge body of water would not only allow ships to navigate into the interior of North Africa, it would also significantly change the local climate. All at a cost of a mere 25 million francs. –Ron Miller

Fiction Writing Prompt: Create a story about a character with a grandiose idea.

Journaling Prompt: Write about the craziest idea you ever had. What happened when you tried to implement it?

Art Prompt: Hubris

Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a grand idea and the person who promoted it.

Welcome to the Carnival of Creativity for September 9, 2012. All links will open in a new tab or window, so feel free to click through and leave some love in the comments. Once you close that window, you’ll be right back here for more linky goodness.

Announcements

Thanks for your patience while I was doing my Toastmaster thing. I didn’t win or place, but I had a fabulous time, learned and grew a great deal, and I am re-energized!

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That’s all for this week. Be sure to submit your article for next week’s Carnival of Creativity by Friday at midnight!

Welcome to the Carnival of Creativity for April 29, 2012. All links will open in a new tab or window, so feel free to click through and leave some love in the comments. Once you close that window, you’ll be right back here for more linky goodness.

If you are coming to this web site, I assume you are a fan of creativity. You cultivate it, share it, and are proud of it. Not everyone is a fan, however.

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.”How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?” said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science…

Uncertainty drives the search for and generation of creative ideas, but “uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most,” the researchers wrote. “Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. …

The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.” –Science Daily

Writing Prompt: Write a scene with a creative character surrounded by people who are invested in the status quo.

Journaling Prompt: When have your creative ideas been shot down by people who are threatened by it? Have you ever stifled your own creativity because of your inner editor?

We have some wonderful submissions this week for your enjoyment and edification. Here we go!

Resources/Tools

Number Trouble from the New York Times will help you get some agreement between subjects and verbs. Warning, this is intense editor stuff, so be prepared for the My Eyes Glaze Over Syndrome. As an antidote, here’s a link to a recent podcast at Writing Excuses on The Hollywood Formula for fiction and script writers. You’ll laugh, you’ll learn, and you’ll be annoyed to find out how much Hollywood manipulates our emotions.